US telecommunications equipment maker CommScope will acquire Arris, in a $7.4B deal valued at $5.69 billion, with the difference comprised of CommScope’s assumption of Arris’s debt. As part of the deal, the Carlyle Group will make a $1M equity investment in CommScope for an approximate 16% stake in the new company.
CommScope’s CEO Eddie Edwards has claimed the two companies’ product lines are complementary, and that the combined company will “enable end-to-end wired and wireless communications infrastructure solutions that neither company could otherwise achieve on its own.”
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2019.

In the era of ubiquitous connectivity, people will not only consume vast amounts of data but stay continuously connected across more devices and platforms. But what will become of WiFi as an access technology? What role will WiFi play when 5G promises near-instant connectivity across several applications? Will WiFi disappear into the mobile ether? Clients, please log in to view the full content.

There is currently much excitement about fixed wireless access (FWA) using millimeter wave spectrum (mmW), particularly in North America. (By strict definition, millimeter wave implies frequencies between 30 and 300 GHz; however, in the present FWA context the industry also refers to frequencies in the 24 and 28 GHz range as mmW). Millimeter wave offers significant throughput performance with a channel size of up to 900 MHz but has coverage challenges. Clients, please log in to view the full content.

On September 16th, 2016, MediaTek announced their first LTE smartphone win for the Sprint network in the US with the LG X Power model LS755. This design win on a major US carrier is significant in that it represents...

Two weeks after the US Commerce Department placed trade sanctions on ZTE over allegedly skirting US export controls laws (see US trade restrictions could be disastrous for ZTE’s smartphone business), a 3-month temporary lift of the sanction was put in place after “active” and “constructive” talks with the US government.

With all four major US carriers announcing an end to 2-year contracts and device subsidies, smartphone financing and sales will likely undergo a transformational change which will invariably move the US smartphone distribution model closer to that of the rest of the world and expose the real cost of devices to the end consumer.

As of January 2016, subscribers will no longer be able to get smartphones on a two year subsidised contract.
New subscribers will be offered AT&T’s Next plan, and will pay instalments on the full price of the smartphone...